Strategy for Mapping Fields to the CDP

Introduction 

The Rev.Up CDP allows you to turn your multiple sources of silo'd data into a unified data set that can give you a 360 view of your customers and prospects and allow you create powerful campaigns. 

Part of the process of creating a unified view of data is the process of mapping fields from your various systems to fields within the CDP. It is common for systems to contain data points about customers or prospects that also exist in another system. All systems will also contain data points that are unique to that system.

This article will walk through some of the best practices for mapping fields to the CDP. 

What is a CDP attribute? 

A CDP attribute is an attribute that you create in the CDP. You map fields from your own system to an attribute in the CDP.

 As an example, if you want to add an Industry field from your CRM to the CDP, you will need to add a CDP attribute to map your own industry field too. 

Some common CDP attributes have been created for you so as to make it easy for you to get up and running quickly. 

You can create up to 500 CDP attributes per entity (account, contact). The CDP attributes that you create are the ones that you will be able to select to create segments. 

What is the benefit of mapping my source fields to a CDP attribute? 

There are several reasons why you map fields from your system to a CDP attribute.

1. It is not best practice to map every single field from your source system to the CDP. You should map fields from your source system that are relevant to your campaign use cases only. You can always come back and map new fields from your source system at a later date.
2. It is common for different systems to contain the same information about your customers and prospects. It is also common for these fields to go by different names across different systems. You can create one CDP attribute to map all the different fields that mean the same thing to one single field in the CDP. This will prevent you from having many different fields that mean the same thing and is part of creating a unified view of your data. 

What types of fields can be mapped to the CDP?

The CDP supports 6 data types for fields. Supported data types are Text, Boolean, Date, Number, Integer and ID. 

Why would I map a field to the ID data type? 

An ID type field is has special significance within the CDP. Only a field that is mapped as an ID data type can be used to create relationships between two data sources. You can manage relationships between two data sources within the setting section for the source. 

How should I map my fields so that my CDP will join my data together and unify my data? 

Many systems will contain a primary key (unique id that identifies a record) and a foreign key (unique id of a record from another system). 

You will want to use these fields to handle how your data is imported to the CDP. In order to use these fields to control how your data is matched and merged within the CDP you will need to map them as ID fields. 

I am creating a new data source and noticed that I do not have a field from my system to map to every attribute in the CDP. Is this okay? 

Yes, it is common for systems to have fields that are specific only to that system. You do not have to map a field from a source to every CDP attribute.